If your applicant intake process involves fogging a mirror, you may be hiring, not selecting.

According to a Purdue University study on decreasing attrition in a contact center environment, you can reduce your attrition by 21% by implementing an applicant intake process that includes a realistic job preview, assessments and a behavioral interview.

Assessment Tools

There are many assessment tools on the market, and I recommend one that looks at the personalities and behaviors of a successful agent. With personality-based assessments, you can have your top performers complete the assessments, and then create a profile for success based on their results and select new agents who possess similar behaviors. By doing this, you will in essence “clone” your top performers and increase the quality of your entire contact center.

Realistic Job Preview

An applicant intake process should be designed to make sure both sides—the applicant and the hiring organization—are benefiting from the decision.

After you have selected a candidate to be hired, you should allow them to select you.

A realistic job preview can take many shapes: It may be a real discussion about the good and bad about the position; it may involve an interview with a seasoned agent who is instructed to be honest and clear about the contact center; or it may involve having the agent do a side-by-side with an existing agent to get a feel for the contact types and culture of the organization before they make their final decision to join the team.

If you applicant intake process “sells” the job to prospective agents and does not accurately portray what is real, you are sure to continue to experience significant attrition and the costs associated with it.

Eric Berg is a 25-year veteran of the contact center industry and an expert in contact center best practices, employee relations and American Agent outsourcing. Eric is the Founder of All-Calls Call Center Outsourcing, a Midwest based contact center outsourcing firm with a unique business plan that provides top rural Midwestern agents that are highly education, stable and possess accent neutral dialects to provide exceptional customer experiences to our clients and their customers.

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